CHAPTER I. COMMODITIES.

Direct barter, the original natural form of exchange, represents rather the beginning of the transformation of use-values into commodities, than that of commodities into money. Exchange value has as yet no form of its own, but is still directly bound up with use-value. This is manifested in two ways. Production, in its entire organization, aims at the creation of use-values and not of exchange values, and it is only when their supply exceeds the measure of consumption that use-values cease to be use-values, and become means of exchange, i. e., commodities. At the same time, they become commodities only within the limits of being direct use-values distributed at opposite poles, so that the commodities to be exchanged by their possessors must be use-values to both,—each commodity to its non-possessor. As a matter of fact, the exchange of commodities originates not within the primitive communities,¹⁴ but where they end, on their borders at the few points, where they come in contact with other communities. That is where barter begins, and from here it strikes back into the interior of the community, decomposing it. The various use-values which first become commodities in the barter between different communities, such as slaves, cattle, metals, constitute therefore in most cases the first money within those communities themselves. We have seen how the exchange value of a commodity is manifested the more perfectly as exchange value, the longer the series of its equivalents or the greater the sphere of exchange of that commodity. With the gradual expansion of barter, the increase in the number of exchanges, and the growing diversification of the commodities drawn into exchange, commodities develop into exchange values, which leads to the formation of money and has a destructive effect on direct barter. The economists are in the habit of ascribing the origin of money to the difficulties which are encountered in the way of extensive barter, but they forget that these difficulties arise from the development of